


A Fool's Game

by CrashCart9



Category: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Genre: Hatesex, Multi, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:18:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrashCart9/pseuds/CrashCart9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>for <a href="http://sherlockkink.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://sherlockkink.livejournal.com/"><b>sherlockkink</b></a>'s "unrequited Holmes/Watson with Watson leaving for Mary no matter what Holmes says"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Fool's Game

It wasn't that he was leaving you for her, but rather that when you told him what she—this Mary—truly was after him for, he didn't believe you. After all you'd been through, Watson believed the lies she'd spouted at him above your logic, and that hurt more than his abandoning of your partnership ever could. He might love her in some way, you know not, but it's clear his devotion to you does not extend into matters of the heart, for which you find your own summarily breaking at the realization.

Anyone who knows Sherlock Holmes knows full well that you are not one for the law over justice, nor entirely against revenge if justified, and so you tell yourself that it is only John--Watson's character that you are fulfilling the role of when you find yourself slipping into the Forrester manor, opening the door to soon-to-be Mrs. Watson's rooms. You're certainly not imagining the tickle of a mustachioed mouth as her lips descend on your pego, and by no means is it her fiancée's name you find yourself biting back as she wraps her thighs around your legs. Though you hold your tongue—the woman is not to be trusted, and even if she wouldn't take your money in lieu of marriage because she was after John—_Watson_'s status as well, she certainly wouldn't hesitate over blackmail of an invert—it is clear that his name is not on her lips either, so you decide to loose restraint on your imagination; some sympathetic part of you has decided that at least one occupant of this quasi-adulterous bed should be thinking of the groom in tomorrow's wedding.

There's a sonata playing in your head because her moans are entirely the wrong timbre, but the woman is wanton, and soon she's clenching around you. You move to pull away, but _Mary_ holds you closer and you come to glory inside of her, spitting curses in your grandmaman's tongue and all-too-cognizant that your hand between your bodies is brushing against the entirely wrong equipment. You withdraw, and she smiles up at you; there's a glint in her eye as you dress, and she suggests an encore sometime after she's Mrs. Watson. . . without or with the Mister, and your chest hurts so much you nearly retch. Face carefully schooled to betray nothing, you kiss the lady (though the title is hardly deserved, you'll play the gentleman) on her cheek and slip out, bidding her follow you to lock the door again behind.

It would be a fool's game to hail a hansom at this time of night from a locale you have no legitimate business visiting, so you wrap yourself tighter in your cloak and begin the long trudge through the dark back to Baker Street. Mrs. Hudson is so used to the pair of you—the one of you, now—coming in at all hours that she wouldn't stir, but Watson's ears are attuned to the front door when you're the enterer such that you used to wonder if he was subconsciously, protectively aware of your absence when you slipped out solo on whatever case had entrapped your mind. There's no way you could face him now, so you slip in an upstairs window only to be caught face-to-face with his tuxedo for tomorrow afternoon's ceremony, lain out carefully by your landlady over Watson's chair in the sitting room. The petulant child inside the detective momentarily considers stoking up the dying embers of the fire and tossing it in, anything to stop this from going forward but you remember—he doesn't want you. He'll be married tomorrow to a woman who cares as little for him as you do much, and it's not petulance when you know that he won't be happy and seeing that in itself is what will kill you.

You slink, cat-footed up the stairs and stop at the landing before John's—you _must_ get this affection for his first name out of your head, Holmes, because he is no longer. . . nay, he never was yours—bedroom and place a hand on his door, straining your ears to hear the even cadence of his somnambulant breaths. It would be so easy to push the door open, to explain, to plead, to take him between both hands and kiss him, actually fulfilling the fantasy you'd played out in your mind hours before as well as night after night in your own bedchambers before that.

But _he believed Mary over you_ months ago at dinner and the wound that act created aches with the fear that he will again, that baring your heart will merely have it ripped from your chest, so you remove your hand from the oak barrier between you and the man who has penetrated the wall around the brain without a heart and retreat back downstairs, grabbing the Morocco case on your way to your own room. Mind calculating dosage and half-life, you load just enough into the syringe that you will feel it tomorrow and press the point into the crook of your arm, depressing the plunger. As you feel the seven-per-cent solution flow into your veins, a tragic smile breaks across your gaunt visage; gone just as quickly as it appeared when you can feel the chemical crossing the barrier into your brain, you think better the aftereffects of the cocaine than _feeling_ as you watch the woman whose bed you've just left marry the man you love.

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: Several days after writing this, I found ["Partings" by Daylyn](http://www.excessant.com/HI/fiction/daylyn/partings.htm). If I didn't know better, I'd think that I wrote "A Fool's Game" as a prequel to that one. Linking because I highly recommend it.


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